The BelieversPress blog features Q & A sessions with the experts we work with, answering questions that you’ve asked. Have a question? Click the link in the sidebar to submit it! Gail asked:

I have written a contemporary novel with two plots that merge. Though I prefer the book under one cover, I could separate it under two titles, Springtime in Savannah with 82,500 words and Sunsets Over St. Augustine with 63,000 words. What is your opinion?

Jay Heinlein, Publishing &  Book Marketing Professional, answered: First of all CONGRATS on finishing your novel(s)!  You have reached a milestone that many are still just hoping to achieve… now a new work begins. As far as Marketability goes: I definitely support the idea of separating your work into two volumes.

• if only one volume, you would have to massively edit and prune away what is likely to be some “very good stuff” – important components of your work that your readers would be denied.
  • most agents  agree/would advise that 100k words is the upper limit for a debut novel,
  • the optimum debut novel is likely in the 80k and under range.  You are right on the mark — in the right word count range with each of the two volumes.
  • The average page count should be somewhere between 250-400 pages.
  Leave the long “omni-bus” treatises to the well-established or the exceptions such as Michener and Tolstoy!

• The two volumes create more opportunity to gain traction in the marketplace and show that you are not a “one-hit wonder.”
  • If a royalty publisher is your ultimate aim, they will like this as well.
  • Novelists are successful because they gain followings and your hard-earned readers/followers will want more…
  In the past, multiple volumes were released strategically in stages… the second release timing was scheduled to be available “just as the readers were getting hungry again.”
  • Also, in the trade distribution models i.e. bookstores – traditional bookselling channels, there are always limited marketing resources and a highly competitive environment for seasonal promotions and shelf-placement opportunities.
  • One at a time was better in that model.

However, in the new “direct access” model, one can become quite successful in directly reaching a “tribe of followers/readers”…

• And, you can do so having never been on a book-shelf and without the high risk perils of the current rapidly changing retail environment.
• In the new model, you are not encumbered by the “seasonal windows” of the “old” traditional bookselling/promotional model and two can be better than one.